


lost and found

by DawningStar



Category: Tron (1982)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-10-31 02:12:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10889532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawningStar/pseuds/DawningStar
Summary: Yori's perspective on the end of the movie: losing hope and going on.





	lost and found

**Author's Note:**

> This was a writing exercise, more or less, and thus contains all the dialogue from the 1982 movie and its novelization that I could manage to fit in; those words aren't mine. Possibly closer to a novelization scene than an independent ficlet. Fun, though! Let me know what you think.

The self-proclaimed User who sat on Yori’s flight deck had spent the entire trip casting strange looks toward her, but since Flynn had offered no explanations yet that made sense, Yori ignored him. There was no time for questions, not about her own User, not what the whole lot of them had been thinking to permit the Master Control Program, no time at all. She tapped at her controls with a worried haste. 

The smooth pilot’s board of the Solar Sailer gleamed with red errors. Yori slid quick fingers over it, fighting to increase speed a little more despite her total lack of authorization here. The central computer was the MCP’s own domain. 

Arrival was the most vulnerable point of their transit. Until they left the beam network, Yori knew quite well even a bit could point which direction they had to be going. Tron knew it, too, if his stiff worried pacing at the other end of the Sailer was any evidence. 

Once they escaped into the barren crevices of this energy-drained wasteland, places to hide and to ambush from abounded. Sark would have no choice but to split up his guards if he wanted to search them all; Yori would bet on Tron against any ten. A little farther, and then they would be close enough to risk abandoning the Sailer. 

Only a little farther… 

From the front Tron shouted “Sark!” in angry warning. The massive Carrier loomed beside them, taking advantage of the terrain to hide its bulk, set for a head-on intercept at full speed. Yori curled over her board to brace for an crash she couldn’t prevent or mitigate. 

Commander Sark’s ship smashed their fragile simulation into junk data along with all Yori’s speed calculations. The force flung her into the rear buffer as the Sailer broke up around her. In the calm of pure shock Yori recalculated how much power the MCP would have used to make that interception. To bring an entire Carrier across the Game Sea faster than a transport beam? How many systems had burned out from that drain? 

She would have preferred to go on being underestimated and dismissed as a threat. 

Impact, amid the clatter of a hundred shattered fragments of the Sailer. Just ahead, her heavy pilot’s board hit at one corner and cracked across in slow derez. The buffer under her screeched across the floor of Sark’s hangar and flared into nothingness, critical failure. Yori fell through its fading remains to land hard on her back. She blinked, unsure for a long moment whether she was going to follow its example or not, and tried to muster a response from her arms and legs. 

Flynn was already scrambling up from the debris unharmed. After the trick with the energy beam she had no idea what would actually hurt him. Yori herself seemed whole, though every part of her code ached. 

Tron’s furious shout still echoed in her ears, but she couldn’t see him; he’d been at watch beside the sails, where had he landed? 

Anxiety winning out over the pain of the landing, Yori rolled over to complete a frantic visual search. Where was Tron? He had been at the other end of the Sailer, but the trajectories— 

He wasn’t here. 

He would never abandon her to Sark if he had a choice. The crash— 

No, a familiar cry of denial sprang up from the deep well of trust Tron had long since won from her. Tron can't lose. I can’t lose him. Not like this...

Yori gave that argument exactly the same strength as every single time before: she wrapped the most vulnerable corner of herself in its silent warmth. One fragment of her racing mind could be permitted to stop processing Tron's long fall, stop running the odds against survival, stop. 

The rest of her calculations, grim and pragmatic in the face of capture, hid that tiny core of hope away. The MCP and Sark together could certainly find something worse than simple derez for all of them. 

Two red-lit guards entered the closing hangar as soon as the more volatile wreckage of the Sailer dispersed into safe rubble. They prodded both survivors up toward the interrogation rooms at the end of a flaring lightstaff. Yori didn’t fight. Neither did she volunteer a word of information. 

Seeing Dumont imprisoned in the torture chamber on Sark’s ship inscribed another sharp pain into her long list of failures. If he hadn’t tried so hard to help at her urgent request, maybe he could have survived a little longer. Yori fled into her oldest friend’s arms for a moment’s fleeting comfort. 

She gave him the blunt report “Tron is dead,” and offered no other detail. Dumont would understand. 

His hand tightened on her upper arm in silent signal as their foreheads touched. 

Yori had known Dumont almost as long as she’d known the older programs in her own laser suite, sisters of one User. So many friends, so much beloved family already lost to the MCP. Yori couldn’t survive losing the last of them. She suspected Dumont might feel the same. 

He held the embrace for another instant, then angled his chin up to ask in a gruff voice, “Who’s that?” 

No point hiding anything about Flynn from the MCP, who had to know all about the digitization. Let the Users help their own. “That is a User, Dumont. He came here to help us.” Grief and denial struggled to choke her voice. “Tron believed in him.” 

For a User, Flynn didn’t look like much, especially stuck in the cell beside them. Yori had no reason to doubt his claim. Equally she had no reason to trust he could or would accomplish any more to their benefit than the rest of his distant kind with their unknowable whims. 

Not even her own User, whose face she knew and loved in the faces of her sister programs, had done anything to slow the rise of the MCP. No User had saved Yori’s sisters from being taken away when the MCP wanted personal control over the digitizing laser. 

Dumont’s gaze flickered. “If the Users can no longer help us we're lost.” But the flat words of despair came with a flex of his hand on her arm, and though Yori didn’t look up she returned the pressure to his shoulder. From Dumont’s steady faith it was a significant if. 

Strained with grief new and old, Yori couldn’t trust Flynn or the Users. She wasn’t going to argue the point. A possibility, however small, still counted. 

When Sark arrived to gloat, his sheer unnerved fury at Flynn’s survival made for at least a moment’s amusement. Then he ordered Dumont singled out for the holding pit. Despite all Yori’s best intentions she couldn’t bite back her protest at being separated. 

The harsh swing of the guard’s lightstaff sent Yori to the floor in a convulsion, reawakening all the errors from the crash and adding new ones in a crackle of pure pain. She huddled into herself, limp against Flynn’s well-meant concern. If she’d taken permanent damage, did it matter when she was about to derez with the ship anyway? 

Her own death sentence was inevitable. Yori's elegant analytical code was redundant to the sheer brute force speed of the MCP, who had eaten both the capabilities and the processor time of uncountable stolen programs and systems. A spare analyst had been just barely useful enough in the factories to keep around. Any defiance made her no longer useful. 

Derez was at least a clean end. It would have been easier to face with a friend beside her and not the User. 

Yori tried to be relieved that Flynn still looked unhurt so far, but she could only come up with tired irritation when he said “These walls...Yori, something’s happening!” as though it were news that the ship was, in fact, starting to derez. 

Considering his record Flynn could probably survive that too. She hoped he would finish whatever mission he’d come for (help Tron, if Tron made it, and he might, he might). It was about time the Users did their own work. 

“Hey,” Flynn said, abandoning his examination of the wall to shake her roughly by the shoulder. 

How did he manage to be even more annoying when she was at minimum function? Why did he have to focus on her? She’d already lost the ability to track her own damage, never mind fixing it, and there was nothing that did not hurt. 

“Yori?” he demanded. “I still have power, Sark doesn't know that.” 

Fine. How nice for the User to assure her he had a chance at surviving. 

Yori mustered the energy to shake her head, curt and bitter words. “Leave me alone. We failed.” Whatever purpose her LoraB had meant her programs to accomplish, whatever Yori herself had hoped to find with Tron, all ending. Yori felt cold shutdown failing one internal process after another as derez approached. 

(Even if Tron lived, he’d be heartbroken. Nothing Yori did would stop that.)

Flynn should leave her and get on with his plan, such as it was. He dragged her to her feet instead. Yori was too disoriented to pull away. “We're only gonna fail if we give up,” he insisted, “now come on, look! The wall! ...Yori?” 

The wall again? Obviously it was being erased...with the ship...and with Yori… 

Darkness flickered in her eyes. Was she derezzing...or falling...like Tron? 

No: there was power, suddenly, free and steady and plentiful enough to shore up all her injuries. Fresh power nothing like the choked trickle of the factory district. Flynn’s hand against her cheek, a warm pulse. Yori blinked, startled as her vision righted itself. 

Questions processed first and immediately ran into one another. “You brought me back—how? Why did you bring me back?” Yori struggled to find her balance on feet that hadn’t quite started reporting in yet. Without Flynn’s grip at her elbow she might have fallen. 

“I need your help. Come on!” Flynn tightened his hand on her wrist and pulled her out of the cell, the powerless wall no hindrance now. 

Of course the User needed help. It was hard to be annoyed at someone who had just saved her from derez...but not impossible. The thing she still hadn’t fully processed was how familiar the annoyance felt, as though Flynn should be—what? Student, friend, family? 

Yori set the puzzle aside for a later time, now that there might be one. 

She and Flynn raced each other up through the Carrier to the command bridge. The factory district had built and rebuilt various weapons and ships for the MCP; even in her deepest stupor, Yori had made an effort to remember everything that stood a chance of being useful to Tron. 

Flynn’s presence seemed to be delaying the ship’s final derez, but not reversing it. Only the minimal-power wireframe remained. By design, basic steering was among the last things to shut down. There was not much use asking Flynn to do more, even if after reviving her he still had the extra power to rez an entire Carrier, which Yori frankly hoped he did not. Calculating that much energy packed into one program’s form unsettled her. 

The User flapped a frantic hand at the blank panels and said, as expected, “Uh, do something with these controls!” 

Yori was already moving toward them. “On it,” she responded briskly, bringing up what functions were left. 

At the least they might be able to surprise Sark in time to rescue Dumont. At best… 

Before she let herself look, Yori input a swift and careful landing course. No distractions. 

Then she strained to catch a view of the mesa below, where Tron, if he survived, would surely try to carry out his assigned task. 

Flynn pressed ahead to the open deck as the ship steadied and stared downward. Sark had reached the MCP with his prisoners, leaving very little visible outside the MCP’s own chamber except the white shape of his landing craft. At the sight of it Yori looked down to add a little more speed to their vector. The MCP could only gloat so long. 

“Yori, look!” Flynn flung one arm to full length to indicate the area beside the ramp to the inner defense. 

They were still so far away, but Yori focused on the barren plain. A red spark of light—a flare of blue— “Tron!” He was alive, alive—Yori didn’t even try to stop her wide smile, or the internal victory cry with no relation at all to calculation and probabilities. Tron didn’t lose. Part of her always knew that. 

He was alive and in pitched battle with Sark, but Yori couldn’t think of much Tron would want more right now. Even so, she watched the trade of bright disk blows with a pounding anxiety. The Carrier moved too slow for Flynn or Yori to reach his side. 

The streak of red light that was Sark staggered and fell forward, uncontrolled energy a crackle around him, his form dead still. No need for help there. Either Tron’s fury or Alan-One’s code or both had given Tron a quick victory. Yori let out a sharp laugh of pure relief. Flynn whooped beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders in shared delight. 

Without their commander, no one who fought for the MCP had any chance against Tron. Yori strained her eyes for a glimpse of blue without leaving her post at the navigation board. He was moving fast into the center of the fortress, he had to be fine—eager as ever to complete what Alan-One wanted done. 

But movement caught her attention. Sark wasn’t derezzing; instead he grew unnaturally tall, with a terrible blank gaze. 

“Look at that!” Yori flinched at the sight of the MCP’s weapon plodding with heavy steps after Tron. Flynn’s method of revival didn’t feel like the MCP. She hoped. 

Tron didn’t lose, but how many times in a row could he be asked to win against the same opponent? 

“I got it.” Flynn straightened abruptly. “Steer us over by the beam. Right next to it.” 

Her hands moved automatically to make the minor course change. Even crazy User commands couldn’t be dismissed. Yet—“What good'll that do?” she demanded. They were much too high to get off the ship safely unless they landed first, which would take too long. 

“I'm gonna jump.” He darted up the tiered ledges toward the open deck, and she followed, forced to take him seriously. “It's the only way to help Tron.” Flynn had a way of making his most glitched statements sound perfectly earnest. 

Yori made a quick grab for his elbow, grabbed the other arm for good measure. “Don't, you'll be derezzed!” Not even the most resilient User-world digitization could survive jumping onto the central core’s armor from this height. As digitization lead, Yori knew that better than most. And if Flynn managed to land in the MCP’s beam itself...no data on that, none at all, but Yori was sure the level of risk was high. 

Flynn leaned in, but instead of touching foreheads in the usual reassurance, to Yori’s surprise he tilted his head and pressed his lips against hers. 

Unlike most of Flynn’s actions this touch was confident as though long-practiced. Since the Carrier had begun to lose resolution everything Flynn did was a stream of energy. Was he trying to make sure she had enough power to survive the Carrier’s final derez without him? Yori didn’t pull away; she followed his example, finding an angle to avoid his nose and returning his embrace. 

The gesture felt familiar in the same distant way as her annoyance. But she stared at him as he let go, waiting for an explanation. 

“Don't worry,” Flynn ordered. He moved back half a step and took a running leap directly into the flaring red beam above the MCP. 

So it was meant to distract her and end her objections, too. Yori watched him fall, frozen in a sharp flare of pain. She wondered how Flynn and Tron could be so different from one another and yet manage to infuriate her in exactly the same ways. 

The ship had come just adjacent to the beam. At least Flynn’s aim was good; his indistinct shape dropped squarely down on top of the Master Control Program’s central core. Yori could see no farther, but she waited, her processes an anxious confusion of grief and hope and denial. 

Flynn’s jump had changed something, because the very color of the beam quivered and flared toward blue—overloading bright gold—had Tron succeeded in taking advantage of Flynn’s talents at distraction? 

The dissolving Carrier was already set to land without further adjustment. Yori let it continue, grateful to be away from the feedback of shifting high energy. She stared into the beam, trying to determine if the faint silhouette going up had looked like Flynn, and whether he had any chance of survival… 

With a tired chuckle, she decided Flynn was incalculable. She’d believe he was dead when she saw him derez with her own eyes, not before. No point making unfounded estimates now. 

Yori could see the blue-lit forms of friendly programs fleeing the wreck of the MCP, so many escaping prisoners that surely Dumont was safe; the one at the back waving them onward was unmistakably Tron. 

The inner fortress and the energy that the MCP had hoarded for so long shattered apart, caught in the explosive death of Master Control. Long-dormant channels brightened in the aftermath, power freed. All Yori wanted to focus on was the program she loved walking toward her. 

The wireframe remnants settled gently down against the mesa. Yori could almost have jumped, but Tron reached up for her and she gladly stepped into his hands. 

He spun her, an easy display of strength. Yori appreciated even more the proof that he hadn’t been seriously damaged in any of the battles. She let herself relax in his embrace and smiled in delight as he murmured, “We did it.” 

Against all odds, they had. 

Still feeling half-overcharged with the power Flynn had left her to maintain the Carrier, she decided on impulse to share. A tilt of her head, and...there. Tron’s lips tasted of static and dust, the sweetness of victory underneath, a surge of energy between them. 

Tron blinked at her, bemused, as she drew away. “That's nice.” 

It was, but it didn’t mean he was off the hook. “We thought you were dead.” Yori couldn’t put much disapproval into the scold when she had him near at long last, but she gave him a pointed look until his mouth quirked in something near enough apology. There was always a next time. Tron needed to stop worrying her so much. 

“Where's Flynn?” he asked. 

Yori wasn’t sure how she felt about the User. At the least he had earned an accurate report. “It was incredible,” she said. “He threw himself into the beam, and distracted the MCP just long enough for you to get the disk in. He saved us.” She’d doubted his willingness to help, his knowledge, and his ability right to the end, but Flynn had definitively proved two of them. “He really did it.” 

And Tron had lost another friend in the process, whether the User had made it out of the system in stable form or not. 

“Video warriors!” Dumont called. Yori reached to take his hand in sheer relief they had all survived. “Look at the I/O towers. Every tower is lighting up." They were: free of the constraints the MCP had set, pale blue light signaled the ability to pay attention to the Users without hindrance. 

It was going to be an enormous mess sorting out who was in charge of what with the MCP down for good and so many vital programs already lost. Even if the Users had any kind of plan for a reversal this drastic, it would take time to figure out. Chaos would rule the system until some new chain of command settled in. But chaos was better than the MCP. They would make it work. 

In the end Flynn had done all he could to help. And he had given her new data to analyze. The Users like him might fail as often as programs did, but if they were so much the same...with enough time, forgiving them didn’t calculate as an impossible task. 

With Tron at her back, his arm a warm comfort around her waist, Yori could finally look out at the changing system and feel hope.


End file.
